Caesar's Column eBook

“Do you think,” I asked, after a pause,
“that she will be safe until to-morrow night?
Should I not go to her at once? Could I not see
Rudolph and have her descend the rope-ladder, and I
meet her and bring her here?”

“No,” he replied, it is now too late for
that; it is midnight. You can place full faith
in Rudolph; his penetration and foresight are extraordinary.
He will not sleep until Estella is out of that house;
and his busy brain will be full of schemes in the meantime.
The best thing we can do now is to go to bed and prepare,
by a good long sleep, for the excitements and dangers
of to-morrow night. Do not fear for Estella.
She has ceased to be a child. In an hour she has
risen to the full majesty of her womanhood.”

CHAPTER X.

PREPARATIONS
FOR TO-NIGHT

The next morning I found Maximilian in conference
with a stranger; a heavily-built, large-jawed, uncommunicative
man. As I was about to withdraw my friend insisted
that I should sit down.

“We have been making the necessary arrangements
for next Monday night,” he said. “The
probabilities are great that we may be followed when
we leave the house, and traced. It will not do
to go, as Rudolph suggested, to the residence of any
friend, and pass through it to another carriage.
The Oligarchy would visit a terrible vengeance on
the head of the man who so helped us to escape.
I have instructed this gentleman to secure us, through
an agent, three empty houses in different parts of
the city, and he has done so; they stand in the center
of blocks, and have rear exits, opening upon other
streets or alleys, at right angles with the streets
on which the houses stand. Then in these back
streets he is to have covered carriages with the fleetest
horses he can obtain. Our pursuers, thinking we
are safely housed, may return to report our whereabouts
to their masters. Estella being missed the next
day, the police will visit the house, but they will
find no one there to punish; nothing but curtains over
the windows.”

“But,” said I, “will they not follow
the carriage that brought us there, and thus identify
its owner and driver, and force them to tell who employed
them?”

“Of course; I have thought of that, and provided
for it. There are members of the Brotherhood
who have been brought from other cities in disguise,
and three of these will have another carriage, which,
leaving the Prince’s grounds soon after we do,
will pursue our pursuers. They will be well armed
and equipped with hand-grenades of dynamite.
If they perceive that the spies cannot be shaken off,
or that they propose to follow any of our carriages
to their stables, it will be their duty to swiftly
overtake the pursuers, and, as they pass them, fling
the explosives under the horses’ feet, disabling
or killing them. It will take the police some
time to obtain other horses, and before they can do
so, all traces of us will be lost. If necessary,
our friends will not hesitate to blow up the spies
as well as the horses.”